


Even If It Kills Me

by shellfishDimes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellfishDimes/pseuds/shellfishDimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes apart and packs up his sniper rifle, and checks his phone. No new messages, no missed calls. All that it tells him is the time, and he is running out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even If It Kills Me

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _The Reichenbach Fall_.

He never finds out what happened on the rooftop of St Bart's. He can't see them; he doesn't look for them, because he was told not to. His sniper scope is focused on the ground, where he knows John Watson will emerge out of a taxi once he catches on that the entire thing with their landlady getting shot was a ruse to get him out of the picture.

He hears the gunshot, and then watches Sherlock Holmes swan dive off the edge, arms spread and coat flapping, like a great dark bird shot down from the sky. Watson is knocked down on the ground, probably concussed, but Sebastian doesn't stay to watch. He takes apart and packs up his sniper rifle, and checks his phone.

No new messages, no missed calls. All that it tells him is the time, and he is running out of it.

He runs down the stairs and across the street, past the crowd gathering around Holmes's dead body. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Watson being pulled back from the corpse by two men, and he hears him shouting the dead consulting detective's name.

He slips into the hospital, unnoticed, and he ducks into the men's toilet. Checking to make sure that it's empty, he goes into a cubicle and produces a lab coat from his duffel bag, complete with an all-access pass. When he leaves the toilet, he is Doctor Robin Gibb, a name Jim chose because he found it incredibly amusing.

He takes the lift up to the top floor, and then the stairs to the roof. Nobody is up here yet – the police will take a while to get here, and if he's caught off guard, he has a badge in the inside pocket of his suit jacket which can make him become Detective Roger Taylor at a moment's notice.

His eyes scan the rooftop, and then he sees the body. His stomach twists as he rushes to it and kneels down next to Jim's head, making sure that his knees avoid the pool of blood. Out of his pocket, he produces a pair of latex gloves, which he snaps on before proceeding any further.

Sebastian touches two fingers to the side of Jim's neck. The skin is still warm and Jim's eyes stare at the sky, mouth open in a grimace that almost resembles a smug smile. There is no pulse.

He wants to call Jim an idiot, scold him for going alone and placing Sebastian to watch on Watson instead of Holmes, but he swallows back the words, worrying his lower lip briefly between his teeth. He is not having a conversation with a corpse.

He closes Jim's eyes, trying not to look at his face as he removes his tie, watch, and cufflinks. He takes a plastic bag from his pocket and picks up the gun with it, tying it up and pocketing it.

Still kneeling next to the body, he sends out two texts. Two orderlies with a trolley and body bag will be waiting at the bottom of the stairs. One will escort Sebastian and the body to the car park and into an ambulance, which will take them to a funeral home where the body will be cremated. The other will take care of the gun and the bloodstain on the rooftop.

None of this was planned, but Sebastian Moran did not get to be Jim Moriarty's second-in-command by having the rug pulled out from under him the moment he is without a plan. Improvisation is second nature.

He unbuttons his doctor's coat and shrugs it off, bunching it into a ball. He places a hand under Jim's neck and lifts his head up, putting the coat underneath it to let it soak up the blood from his head wound. It is sodden in a matter of seconds.

Sebastian takes Jim under his armpits and knees, lifting the body off the ground. Jim is limp and surprisingly light in his arms as he carries him across the roof and to the door back into the building, trying not to get any excess blood on his jacket.

The door is opened by an orderly whom Sebastian remembers recruiting for the organisation eleven months ago, who is unable to suppress his gawping as Sebastian carries Jim's body in and places him in the body bag on the trolley. The other orderly zips up the bag with fumbling fingers, and Sebastian can almost feel the intensity with which he is trying not to stare at either the body or him.

They aren't given a second glance as they wheel it through the hospital. He rides in the back of the ambulance with the body bag. At the funeral home, the owner calls him _boss_ and offers him a cup of tea, which Sebastian takes black, with two sugars.

He sits in the waiting room flipping his thin, expensive mobile phone in his hands. There is a television set mounted on the wall, which he changes to BBC News, but it tells him nothing. Too soon, he thinks.

After almost two hours have passed, he is handed a cinerary urn with all that's left of Jim Moriarty in it. He thanks the owner and leaves the funeral home, taking the car waiting outside back to his flat.

He places the urn on the coffee table and sits down on the settee, and exhales.

He is the heir apparent of a criminal empire. Everyone who answered to Moriarty now answers to him. On the evening news, they say that Sherlock Holmes died shamed and a fraud. The game is done, and Jim Moriarty has emerged triumphant.

Sebastian Moran doesn't feel like a winner.


End file.
